I should be elated. Calling my parents. Ordering champagne. Planning my triumphant return to Chicago.
Instead, I stared at my silent phone, numb. No sense joy. No pride. Not even relief.
Instead was only the suffocating weight of a future stretching out before me—more eighty-hour weeks, more cancelled plans, more meaningless acquisitions and mergers that ultimately served no purpose except making rich people richer.
Including me. That was the bargain, right? Sacrifice your time, your relationships, your sense of self—and in return, you get money, status, and the hollow satisfaction of meeting external expectations.
I pressed my palms against my eyes.
I heard the creak of Doc’s bedroom door before his footsteps shuffled down the hallway. My grandfather appeared in the kitchen doorway, hair mussed from his nap, squinting at me through reading glasses that had slipped halfway down his nose.
He headed for the coffeepot. “You look like someone who’s thinking too hard.”
“That’s probably accurate.” I closed my laptop with more force than necessary.
Doc poured himself a cup and settled into the chair across from me. “What’s got you wound up tighter than Mabel Peterson’s girdle at the Christmas buffet?”
Despite everything, I laughed. “That’s a mental image I didn’t need.”
“Deflection noted.” He sipped his coffee, eyeing me over the rim. “Want to try again?”
I sighed, tracing the edge of my phone with my fingertip. “I just got offered a promotion. Junior partner track at Hadley-Ross.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Well now, that’s something. Congratulations are in order, I suppose?”
“I suppose,” I echoed.
Doc tilted his head, studying me like I was a puzzling set of symptoms. “You don’t look like someone who just got everything they wanted.”
“Everyone keeps saying that. It’s what I’ve been working toward since law school.” The words sounded hollow even to my own ears.
“Interesting how you didn’t answer the question.”
I met his gaze, feeling strangely exposed. “Can I ask you something?”
“Always.” He set his mug down, giving me his full attention.
“Why did you decide to quit medicine?”
Doc leaned back in his chair, his expression softening into something wistful. “Now there’s a question with history behind it.”
“Dad never talks about it. Just says you had a midlife crisis.”
He snorted. “Your father would call a man stopping to admire a sunset a crisis of purpose.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“No, it doesn’t.” He ran his thumb along the rim of his mug, gathering his thoughts. “The simplest version is that I was saving lives but losing myself.”
The words landed with unexpected weight.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means I was good at what I did. Damn good. Saved more people than I lost.” His eyes took on a faraway glaze.“But the longer I did it, the less I recognized the man in the mirror. Always rushing from one emergency to the next. Missing your father’s baseball games. Forgetting your grandmother’s birthday. Prescribing pills for my own insomnia.”
“But you were helping people.”
“Was I?” He shrugged. “Or was I just following a path I’d chosen so long ago that I’d forgotten I could step off it?”
